NYC Marathon 2012

What The NYC Marathon Really Says About The City

We have always been a bit conflicted about Bloomberg-era New York City, but we’ve never exactly known how to put it. We’re not going to make the mistake of pining for the druggy lawlessness of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but when we pull out our old Paul’s Boutique LP, let’s just say that we’re quite… aware that the corner hosts a cute little bistro now. We keep our eyes peeled for the odd, surviving black-on-yellow street sign. We wonder about Berlin.

A report that surfaced yesterday on Gothamist cleared a few things up for us though; it allowed us to see what’s wrong with Hizzoner. It’s not just that he diverted crucial supplies of food and generators from the devastated quarters of Staten Island (that most unloved of boroughs) to the organizers of the New York City Marathon — although that alone should be enough to write him off as an Upper East Side Marie Antoinette (“let them eat cake — but not too much. And no soda”). That’s bad enough, but it’s not just that. That’s symptomatic. The problem with Mike Bloomberg is that he can really only visualize people whose lives resemble that of Mike Bloomberg.

According to Staten Island Borough President Jim Molinaro, the situation is pretty bleak. People are looting stores, and rescue workers are still finding bodies. Though the mayor has stated that Sunday’s marathon will not “redirect any focus,” Staten Island’s elected officials aren’t buying it. As Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis told the Staten Island Advance, “to take one resource, one police officer to supervise a stupid marathon is a slap in the face to the borough."

To our eyes, though, this sort of fits. This is representative of Mike Bloomberg’s New York City. Mike Bloomberg knows the sort of people who participate in the New York City Marathon. His daughter’s friend’s husband could be running in it, or if not, then someone else at a similar point of remove. Someone with really nice Sauconys, anyway, who never goes to White Castle or smokes menthols or consumes an inordinate amount of RC Cola.

We just can’t shake the feeling that the success — the low crime rate, the gentrification, the health initiatives — of Mike Bloomberg’s New York is kind of pernicious, and we think this particular incident reveals the arrogance at its heart. In the ‘80s, during the Cold War, New York was seen as the world’s great democratic capital, and a lot of its chaos was ascribed to that very quality.

To be democratic is to sometimes be demotic, and we don’t think Mike Bloomberg is very good at that. The New York of the New York City Marathon (and of Central Park West, and of Soho House, and of Eataly) is doing well, is better than ever, but Staten Island is underwater. You can find any rare Camembert you want on Bedford Avenue, but you can’t get a Big Gulp in Queens.

When it’s just soda and high rents, it remains arguable. It’s gross to drink two quarts of cola. Bohemian quarters move around. The situation in Staten Island, though, is a little more directly revealing: In New York’s most unfashionable borough, unfashionable people are having unfashionable problems, and Bloomberg is going ahead with what Borough President Molinaro calls his “parade.”